To get to Phnom Penh we took a tour from Saigon. It was a tour that took in the variety and vastness of the Mekong Delta region. We experienced the strangely ordered chaos of two floating markets, saw a fabulously noisy and animated machine for husking and sorting rice, we tasted fresh coconut candy and rice paper from a waterfront manufacturer and explored the weird and wonderful plants of a fruit farm. We saw bath time for the water buffalos (it looks like they enjoy it far more than their owners) and spent hours returning the waves of the hoards of little children that were swimming in the water. It was a very pleasant and relaxing 3 days.

Phnom Penh is a surprise. Despite being unceremoniously dropped by our last tour guide on what looked like a piece of waste ground we found our way to our hostel just before 6.30pm and settled down to watch their nightly showing of 'The Killing Fields'. Though I had a vague knowledge of what the Khmer Rouge had done in the 70s I was not prepared for what I have learnt and heard whilst I have been in Cambodia. To say that the nation is still dealing with the fallout of this catastrophic period is to misunderstand how systematically, brutallyand physically abused every single individual alive at the time was. I can't even begin to understand what these people have been through and what that can do to them and their children. Estimates of how many died under the Pol Pot regime from 1975 to 1979 range from 1.3 to 3 million people. This from a nation of 12 million. two thirds of these figures were killed directly by the Pol Pot cadres in extermination camps, the other third were killed by overwork or exhaustion in the fields where the Khmer Rouge forced them to work in order to achieve the Maoist Agrarian Utopia they believed was best for the country and its people. And many thousands more if they were lucky enough to survive the death camps and the forced labour were to die in the severe drought that followed the Khmer Rouges disasterous policies and subsequent overthrow by the Vietnamese.

The brutality of the KR was graphically brought home to me by a visit to the famous S21 'Rehabilitation Centre'. It was a school before the KR emptied Phnom Penh of citizens and turned it into a prison. It has been left pretty much as it was found by the Vietnamese soldiers who found it upon retaking Phnom Penh in January 1979. Except of course that the mutilated corpses they found in the torture chambers and swinging from the gallows in the courtyard have been taken away and buried. Photos above steel framed beds complete with leg irons show you graphically what was found there. In many rooms you can still see blood on the walls, floor and ceiling that escaped the mops of the clean up operation. Tiny hastily constructed cells of wood or breeze block housed inmates that had virtually no chance of getting out of captivity alive. You could almost smell the fear and hear the screams. Fortunatley, or unfortunatley the KR kept very full and complete files of all those who passed through this facility. Now the mug shot style photos of the inmates on entry fill three galleries. The most effecting are the children. Some can't be more than 5 years old and they have there elbows bound behind their back and they look terrified. Perhaps they have seen their parents killed already, or perhaps they have been picked up of the street and their parents do'nt know where they are. All the faces are looking straight at the camera and it was very difficult to look at them. Its even difficult to write about it now. You now that every single face you look at is the face of someone who had a lonely, brutal and agonizing death. Maybe one of the picture I had seen of the post torture deaths had been one of those children, or one of those bruised naked old people or one of those young men with teeth knocked out and blood in their hair staring at the camera with petrified black eyes. It is horrible. Informing was encouraged and rewarded by the KR. Suspicion and jealousy and self interest imprisoned these people and sent them to their fates. No-one was safe. There are accounts of KR soldiers and officials passing through the death camps. One S21 guard saw his Uncle in a cell at S21 but could not say anything to him and hoped his Uncle would not say anything during his torture as if he did so it would mean that the guard and his family would be killed too. At its zenith S21 was murdering 100 people a day. A few miles away at the killing fields we saw the piles of skulls and dirty rags that used to be human beings before they went into S21 and facilities like it. At one point the killing fields had to house prisoners overnight as they did not have time to kill the required 300 people a day. Similarly, they took to using axes and knives to kill as the bullets were proving too expensive. Truckloads of blindfolded, tortured people would be killed whilst a loudspeaker strung from a tree played music to drown out the crys and moans of the dying.

The people who ordered and organized these horrors and carried out this industrial scale murder are still free. Many are in government or hold positions of power severely handicapping any chance of justice for the families of victims. Only a handful of junior officers and officials have ever been put before a court and many of these receive paltry sentences. Pol Pot himself died under house arrest in 1998. House arrest imposed on him by the KRin a showtrial in the jungle.

The international community denied any such atrocities happened until relativley recently. The KR held a seat at the UN until 1990. As a nation the people have every right to be bitter and suspicious of foreigners but instead we have found the opposite. People want to enjoy themselves as much as possible and like hanging out with their pals and family. Taxi drivers outside our hostel are constantly playing practical jokes on each other or swapping funny stories or chatting to tourists. Everyone has a smile for you and are as interested in you as you are in them. Friendly doesn't do them justice. They are open and honest and will willingly answer any question you put to them even if it maybe about the KR, in fact many want to talk about it. Even the kids who are trying to hawk stuff to you have a great turn of humour ("Do you want to buy a book?" "No, nothing. Thank you." "5 Dollars for nothing") and as soon as the rain starts and the tourists go indoors they are off, shoes gone, stripped to the waist chasing their pals around in the puddles.

I sincerely wish we had much more time here. Another time maybe...

Chris